President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office of the
White House in Washington, DC, January 23, 2017. (photo: Saul Loeb/Getty
Images)
Trump Hands US Policy Writing to Shadow Groups of Business Execs
By Anita Kumar, McClatchy DC
08 August 17
President Donald Trump, lacking trust in the speed, skill or loyalty of the
government workers he inherited, is shifting the task of writing U.S. policy
to a network of advisory groups stacked with business executives that
operates outside of public view.
It's a move that could be cheered by the voters who sent Trump to Washington
to clean house. But it's also one that might be breaking the law.
In a growing number of cases, the administration has been accused of
violating a federal requirement that these advisory groups - working on
everything from jobs training to environmental policy - open their meetings,
release their documents and announce their members' names. Three lawsuits
have been filed in recent weeks accusing the administration of failing to
disclose information about groups charged with investigating voter fraud and
devising a plan to upgrade the nation's crumbling roads and bridges.
The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which describes its
mission as protecting employees who protect the environment, expects to file
suit as soon as this month over the group Trump set up to examine the
Environmental Protection Agency's program to clean up toxic waste. That
Superfund group turned over 42 recommendations two weeks ago to EPA
Administrator Scott Pruitt, who used them to issue 11 new directives.
"These are big kahunas that are supposed to be abiding by basic transparency
rules," said Stephen Spaulding, chief of strategy and external affairs at
Common Cause, a nonpartisan group. "It's as if they are being dragged
kicking and screaming into sunshine."
Presidents of both parties have long deployed advisory groups to help
develop policy, occasionally running into criticism for failing to disclose
more. President Bill Clinton faced a lawsuit over his wife's health care
task force. President George W. Bush's vice president was sued over his
committee designed to develop a national energy policy. President Barack
Obama faced criticism about some of his working groups examining his
economic stimulus package.
In fiscal year 2015, the most recent year for which statistics are
available, 287 committees advised the president and agencies, according to a
Congressional Research Service report. That number gradually dropped from
460 in 1998, according to a presidential report to Congress on the issue.
But what's different now is that Trump aides more often state that they do
not need to abide by the Federal Advisory Committee Act or that the law
doesn't require as much information to be disclosed as has been in the past.
In at least one instance, they said they were following the law - but that
they didn't have to.
"To be sure, the commission has agreed voluntarily to abide by the
provisions of FACA," Department of Justice attorneys wrote July 13 in the
administration's response to a pair of lawsuits filed against Trump about
his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.
Trump hasn't made keeping Americans informed a top priority: He won't reveal
who is visiting the White House, he won't release his tax returns, and he
won't release who he is meeting with or what he's doing for hours at a time.
The White House also did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
Since Trump was inaugurated in January, his aides have been warned about
abiding by the law: In February, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in
Washington sent a pair of letters to White House Counsel Don McGahn
criticizing the failure to disclose information about Trump's groups of CEOs
and conservative thinkers helping select a nominee to the Supreme Court. In
July, House Democrats sent a letter to Vice President Mike Pence accusing
him and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who leads the election
commission, of violating the law.
Critics worry the advisory groups' secrecy is leaving Americans in the dark
about what the federal government is doing and if the people crafting policy
will benefit from the proposals. They hope agency inspectors general will
launch investigations.
Trump created the Strategic and Policy Forum, comprised of business leaders
and led by Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of Blackstone, to develop his
economic agenda. He established the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative, made up
of business executives and headed by Andrew Liveris, chairman of the Dow
Chemical Company, to develop a jobs plan. And he formed the American
Technology Council to upgrade the federal workforce; it's made up of
government employees, but at least one of its working groups is made up of
tech leaders.
This reliance on business leaders makes sense, given Trump was elected in
part by selling Americans on his business credentials.
"This is a president whose first instincts are to turn to outside,
non-government people," said Anne Weismann, chief FOIA Counsel for CREW.
Trump's groups have varied in how well they abide by the broad 1972 law on
federal advisory committees - sometimes called commissions, councils, task
forces or working groups - that give advice, solve issues or develop policy.
They are mandated to list meetings in the Federal Register, open meetings to
the public, release records, including meeting minutes and information
considered by members, even though some argue they can be time-consuming
tasks. In addition, their membership is supposed to be balanced.
Some Trump administration groups have opened their meetings - or part of
their meetings - released documents and announced the names of their
members. But others have not. At least some of the time that Trump met with
them behind closed doors, a handful of reporters have been briefly allowed
in.
In at least one case, a group appeared to abide by all requirements: Trump's
advisory group to combat drug addiction and the opioid crisis led by New
Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. That group issued an interim report last week.
Chris Calabrese, vice president for policy at the Center for Democracy &
Technology, said there's nothing unusual in a president bringing together
executives to talk, especially tech executives who hope they can help the
administration increase cybersecurity and modernize federal agencies.
"Obviously we believe the president needs to follow the law," he said.
Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility, wants to find out who the EPA appointed to the Superfund
task force. Some names have been released by EPA but his group has submitted
a public records request for all the names and hopes to hear back by Aug.
24. It plans to file a lawsuit - which is already written - if it does not
get answers. "Our concern is that agencies of EPA-regulated industry are
allowed to write their own rules," he said.
Theresa Lee, a staff attorney at the ACLU Voting Rights Project, said the
ACLU's lawsuit spurred some transparency - including the creation of a
website - at the election commission that Trump created after claiming
without evidence that millions of people had voted illegally and deprived
him of a popular-vote victory.
Their documents were posted online, though not all of them. Their second
meeting was announced in the Federal Register, but some say it did not
provide enough notice.
Just before the second meeting, a federal judge ruled that the commission
had done enough; it did not have to produce more documents or allow the
public to attend the meeting in person.
While their first meeting was held by phone, the second one was
live-streamed, though the equipment was not working properly, according to a
statement on Kobach's Facebook page, which has since been removed.
Last week, Food & Water Watch sued the president for not opening up the
Infrastructure Council, made up of builders and engineers and led by two New
York real estate developers and Trump friends, Richard LeFrak and Steven
Roth, who could benefit from the council's decisions and recommendations.
"The present administration has adopted a pattern and practice of
establishing advisory committees, largely populated by President Trump's
business associates and friends, to advise him and agency secretaries on
economic and business-related matters," according to the July 25 lawsuit.
"This practice, in effect outsourcing policy making to private individuals
who are unfettered by conflict-of-interest rules and other public
accountability standards, raises a host of ethical and transparency
concerns."
e-max.it: your social media marketing partner